The next superpower

In 2013, Shimizu quit his job, founded green tech firm Challenergy, and won funding to invent a wind turbine "that is unbreakable by a typhoon."

Shimizu and his team made two fundamental changes to the design of conventional wind turbines.

First, they designed an omnidirectional vertical axis that is able withstand Japan's unpredictable wind patterns.

Watch a typhoon blow this car away

Then they incorporated the Magnus effect -- the sideways force that causes a spinning object todeviate from a straight path, like the spin on a penalty kick in soccer.

The Magnus effect offers an unprecedented level of control over the turbine's blades. By tightening the center rod, engineers can adjust the speed of the blades to ensure they don't spin out of control in a storm.

When the Challenergy team last simulated their inventionin July 2015, it achieved 30% efficiency. Propeller-based wind turbines typically achieve 40% efficiency, but can't operate in a typhoon.

In July, the first prototype was installed in Okinawa. Now all the Challenergy team needs to test their creation's efficiency in real life is a typhoon.

"I want to install our wind-power generator at the new National Stadium," Shimizu says, of the facility being built for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. "Or on the Tokyo Tower, because the Eiffel Tower installed a wind-power generator last year at the time of the COP21 (climate summit)."

For Shimizu, it's a service he owes his country.

"Our generation reaped the benefit of nuclear power -- we never experience a power black out because of it," Shimizu says.